Yank as a Modern Day Oedipus in O Neills Play, The Hairy Ape Essay

force as a groundbreaking Day Oedipus in O Neills Play, The Hairy apeThe representation of tragedy today has adapted itself to more humanistic, base and emblematical concerns. Often, they are commentaries on society just as much as they are on the nature of man. Although O Neill insists that his play The Hairy Ape is not a tragedy, further rather a dark comedy, the play follows the interpretation of a tragedy. The basic points that make up a tragedy unperturbed remain the same, even if they have to be slightly modified to be relevant to todays audience. Despite this, The Hairy Ape bears a striking simile to the quintessential Greek tragedy, Oedipus Rex. The scarce direct challenge to the Aristotelian definition of tragedy is the portrayal of the tragic hero as not only not being a frightful in the traditional sense, but usually as a working class, common man. Arthur Miller discusses this article of faith in his essay Tragedy and the Common Man. In it, he insists that we ne ver hesitate to attribute to the well placed and the exalted the very same mental processes as the lowly and if the exaltation of tragic military action were truly the property of the high bred character solely, it is inconceivable that the mass of manhood should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it(Miller 1162). According to Aristotle, a tragedy concerns a person of noble stature. In the modern sense, as explained by Miller, noble does not necessarily mean royalty or upper class, merely that the tragic protagonist is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to tell one thing - his sense of personal dignity(1162). Yank is involuntary to do this. His sense of justice is primitive in that he is not concerned with the consequences of his reve... ... leads him back to the realization that he was the criminal that he had been pursuing. deeds Cited and ConsultedCarpenter, Frederic I. Eugene ONeill. New York Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1964. Clark, Marden J. Tragic Effect in The Hairy Ape. Modern Drama 10 1968Egri, Peter. Belonging Lost Alienation and Dramatic Form in Eugene ONeills The Hairy Ape in Critical Essays on Eugene ONeill. James J. Martine, ed. Boston G.K. Hall & Co., 1984. Miller, Arthur. Tragedy and the Common Man. Weales, Gerald, ed. closing of a Salesman Text and Criticism. New York Penguin Books 1996ONeill, Eugene. The Hairy Ape in Four Plays by Eugene ONeill. New York Signet Classic, 1998. Vernant, J.-P. Tensions and Ambiguities in Greek Tragedy. In J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, eds., Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece. Sussex, N. J. 1981.